6 October 2019  Issue No: 569

India is trying to attract international faculty to teach and do research in Indian universities – the strategy is central to the new ‘Institutions of Eminence’ programme. But the challenges are considerable, including low salaries, government regulations and bureaucracy and lack of appropriate infrastructure.

A student union at Canada’s McMaster University has revoked permission for a Chinese student group to operate on campus over alleged links to the Beijing government, after reports that the Chinese Students and Scholars Association disrupted a talk on campus by an Uighur activist.

The 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China is an opportunity to look at the evolution of the current higher education system, including continuing attempts to mix parts of the Western system with Chinese culture and values and national ideology.

In the new knowledge domains of climate change, HIV and AIDS, and gender, countries in the Global South are showing they can punch above their weight – despite their distance from centres of knowledge production and additional national challenges.

Recruitment of foreign academics in Japanese universities has contributed significantly to higher education internationalisation, but recent research has highlighted cultural gaps and troubling differences in career expectations of foreign teachers in Japan, leading to frustration and a sense of being marginalised.